glimpse of Fabia.  Once only his eye caught a white-robed stately figure appearing in the doorway toward evening, a figure which instinct told him was the object of his passion.  He had to restrain himself, or he would have thrown off all concealment then and there, and snatched her away in his arms.  He saved himself that folly, but his quest seemed hopeless.  However weak the patrol in other parts of the city, there was always an ample watch around the Atrium Vestae.

Gabinius saw that his stay around Rome was only likely to bring him into the clutches of the law, and reluctantly he started back, by a night journey in a stolen wagon, for the safer hill country beyond the Anio.  But he was not utterly cast down.  He had overheard the street talk of two equites, whom in more happy days he had known as rising politicians.

“I hope the consuls are right,” the first had said, “that Caesar’s army will desert him.”

“Perpol,” responded the other, “your wish is mine!  If the proconsul really does advance, nothing will stand between him and the city!”

Gabinius kept his own counsel.  “In times of war and confusion, the extremity of the many is the opportunity of the few,” was the maxim he repeated to himself.

When he was well out of the city and moving up the Via Salaria, the trot and rattle of an approaching carriage drifted up upon him.

“Shall we stop and strip them?” asked Dromo, one of the accompanying brigands, in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Ay,” responded Gabinius, reining in his own plodding draught-horse, and pulling out a short sword.  “Let us take what the Fates send!”

A moment later and Servius Flaccus was being tumbled out of his comfortable travelling carriage, while one brigand stood guard over him with drawn sabre, a second held at bay his trembling driver and whimpering valet, and a third rifled his own person and his conveyance.  There was a bright moon, and the luckless traveller’s gaze fastened itself on the third bandit.

“By all the gods, Gabinius!” cried Servius, forgetting to lisp his Greekisms, “don’t you know me?  Let me go, for old friendship’s sake!”

Gabinius turned from his task, and held to his nose a glass scent-bottle he had found in the vehicle.

“Ah! amice,” he responded deliberately, “I really did not anticipate the pleasure of meeting you thus!  You are returning very late to Rome from your Fidenae villa.  But this is very excellent oil of rose!”

“Enough of this, man!” expostulated the other.  “The jest has gone quite far enough.  Make this horrible fellow lower that sword.”

“Not until I have finished making up my package of little articles,” replied Gabinius, “and,” suiting the action to the word, “relieved your fingers of the weight of those very heavy rings.”

“Gabinius,” roared Servius, in impotent fury, “what are you doing?  Are you a common bandit?”